Genesis of Monsters
by PaxRomaDacia
Summary: After receiving a mysterious S.O.S. signal, the Ghost crew sets out to investigate with the intention of saving their signalers from a possible Imperial threat. But when they arrive to a space station just bordering the Unknown Regions, a simple rescue mission will turn into a quest for survival when something stalks them in the shadows... something even The Force cannot sense.


Authors note: So this is my first Rebels fanfic, since I am finally getting into Star Wars again I might as well make a story for the show since why not? I'll be honest with you guys, I'm not the biggest fan of Rebels, I like that characters but the show as a whole could be much better. It's no Clone Wars, but at least there's no more Jar Jar… Fuck you Jar Jar.

Anyways, enough about my little rant. I wanted to make it more obvious what exactly this story has in mind, but just because I like to fuck with people, I will only give hints as to what is going on here, so I will love to see you guys guessing what's going on until I reveal my little… surprise. For now, just sit back and enjoy the beginning of a new story.

 **Prologue: Growth**

 **O-O-O**

A black world floats in the dark abyss. Terrestrial with blackened landscapes and a climate that death itself would enjoy, cold winds that provide a comfort only death will embrace. A planet rife with erupting volcanos of scorching lava and turbulent windstorms that tear though the air, the erratic temperatures already nerving the minds of the Imperial scouts sent to the surface of this inhospitable world.

The Imperial Survey Corps was always temptation for young recruits, the chance to embark on adventure and explore the galaxy for new worlds was a prospect that excited many. But the actual job was nothing more than another tedious working job with little pay and high risk, not for the sake of a thrill or excitement, but for the benefit of the Empire while the poor recruits were stuck with a dead end job. All they would do is gather information and send it back to their superiors without knowing what would be done with it, and then they were off on another world.

Granted, these scouts did an amazing job; but only at the expense of their lives.

Each scout sent down to the planet surface wore a white and black enviro-suit, all in perfect uniform as is Imperial regulation. The suits themselves were much lighter and flexible, compared to the much earlier bulky and cumbersome suits in the days of the old Republic, now dead and replaced by a far stronger and superior Empire; one that would last for eternity.

Four in total walked through the windy and dead lands, black plains of shadow with only the built in torches in their suits lighting the way of the gloomy sky. Ash and soot were blown towards their direction, covering the large visor helmets that were periodically wiped away by auto cleaning systems installed in the visors; only for more black dust to cover their vision. Just fifty kilometers away were one of the massive volcanos that sprouted out molten rock and the ash that blurred their vision, a dangerous place to explore indeed.

The scout in front seemed determined to finish his mission, pushing on ahead despite the wind storm that cut through the atmosphere like knifes though bantha butter. Two more close behind were eager to finish as well, but took more cautious steps forward as they did not want to risk tripping and causing a leak of oxygen through their suits, the planet's atmosphere that had yet to be scanned if it was breathable. The last scout behind sprinted a short distance to catch up, realizing he was falling behind and had no desire to be lost in the wasteland.

As the Imperials continued onward, strenuous walking took a turn for the worse. Slanted slopes of the black rock made traveling even harder, the sound of grating pebbles rubbed the soles of their boots, round pieces of stone rolled down the rocky landscape they travelled. Their visors beheld the group jagged mountains, shaped in the form of stalagmites with sharpened mountain tops, high enough to impale a Star Destroyer though its hull.

The climb upward payed off for the low paid explorers, and they reached a large opening in the mountain bottom; not a mere hole but an entrance to a grand cave. The gaping maw of stone and stalactites greeted the explorers, with no usual sounds of dripping water to echo across the even darker spaces of emptiness. Lit torches shone their light through the darkness, revealing only the already empty space devoid of life; a common theme with every trip to this world.

But that was their mission; a mission of life and its search.

With the usual treatment of the unknown, the explorers only knew that a previous team that landed on this world, a science team sent to gather samples of possible life on this world. One of their companions was said to have been lost in the windstorms of ash, and got separated from his team until communicating with his already gone team that left the world in a hurry. The last transmission was cut off when the explorer said he found something in his location, and then was cut off shortly after.

So far, the rescue team had come up short with their search. There was no trace of their missing scientist, and it seemed like the only way of finding the lost explorer was to go deeper in this cave; a prospect that displeases the rescuers. All of this trouble to find a lost scientist? It would make sense that he would go deeper into a cave unexplored, Imperial scientists had a strong sense of curiosity; that's why they frequently joined scouts on these missions.

The group continued onward, no longer hearing the roaring gusts of wind and instead the echoing footsteps of their treading of smooth stone. The silence was unsettling, too calm for explorers to be all alone, it felt like there was something inside this vast cave that had yet been found. The thrill of adventure had been replaced by the feeling of dread; these scouts had a bad feeling about this.

It wasn't long before the group had to stop, seeing that the rest of their way had been hindered by a large gorge. The explorers looked around their area, and yet there was no sign of their lost scientist and came to one conclusion; he was below their obstacle. The gorge was too wide for an ordinary human to make a jump across, only someone like a Jedi would have been able to make it without difficulty. But the Jedi were all but dead, and the Sith that now rule this galaxy had better things to do than to go cave spelunking.

The scout ahead that wanted to rush inside this cave was now eager to go back, and after leaning a little too close to the edge for comfort, he slipped from the smooth surface the moment he turned back and fell backwards. This would have been the end for him, if it weren't for the bottom of this gorge containing a large lake deep enough to cover for his fall, resulting in a splash after his screams instead of the thud of broken bones and ruptured organs.

"Gilday?!" Called out one of the explorers from above, shining his light down to see their fellow scout alive and well; only his pride wounded. "Are you okay?!"

"Yeah!" Gilday raised a thumbs up. "I slipped and fell! But I'm still breathing!"

"Good!" His comrade replied. "We wouldn't want to bring back a dead man!"

Gilday brushed off the quip, already used to such jokes. He was the new recruit getting his chops busted, part of the most disappointing job with the best team. Gilday was never much of an adventurer, but he had the heart of one. He joined the Imperial Survey Corps in order to escape his boring life of a credit accountant and have some thrill in his life, meet new people, see new environments, and just explore the stars for their beauty and majesty.

He did not exactly get his expectations fulfilled. Sure, he got to see new worlds, but he could never stay on them long before Imperials arrived to colonize them and establish their ever present dominion. Usually, he would have left the first time he went on this unremarkable world of wasteland, but he had to be sent on this important mission by the request of some other scientist.

Now here he was, stuck below a gorge and unable to climb back up.

"Is there any way you can climb back up?!"

Gliday swum to the rocky structure in front of where he fell, gripping his hands on the stone for them to only slip off.

"No! I can't get a good grip on the wall!" Gilday called out. "Guess I'll just do some backstrokes until you rescue me!"

There was a pause until he heard his comrade shout back to him. "Okay! We're going back to the ship to get our gear! We might take a while so just stay here and wait!"

"Sure!" Gilday agreed as his team left, before mumbling to himself. "Not like I have anywhere else to go."

Gilday took a better look at his surroundings, and saw that behind him was a rocky shore for him to swim towards and dry off. He lifted himself up from the shore, glad that he didn't have to wait for water to leak into his suit and sat down on the rock to wait for his rescue. The last thing he wanted was to wait for his rescue, but he should have seen this coming and putted up with his hurt pride, sucking it up and tapped his fingers on his leg out of impatience.

Beyond the shore, Gilday could see an expanded region of the cave; most likely going deeper inside the belly of shadows. Gilday debated to himself whether he should go in or not, but with the recent fall he took and the impatience of waiting, his curiosity overtook him and he got up to walk further inside. He may as well try to finish the rescue mission himself, maybe get a few seconds of glory for accomplishing a task for himself to prove he wasn't just some rookie.

The deeper Gilday went, the more he could feel himself losing balance from the slippery stone and hear the sounds of dripping water, and yet there was still not trace of this lost scientist. He wondered if he just went mad and became some kind of crazy hermit, mumbling knowledge of whatever field of science he knew to himself. As entertaining as it was in the dark humor Gilday liked, he knew this man was only gone for a day; not nearly enough time to go insane.

Without looking below him, Gilday managed to trip on something and fell facedown, nearly breaking his visor like the clumsy fool he could be.

"Damn it!" Gilday cursed to himself. "What is wrong with me today?"

Gilday assumed it was a rock and got up shortly to look back at what he expected it to be. Instead, he found something even more unexpected that unnerved him; the scientist he was looking for.

Slowly, Gilday turned over the sideways leaning body over on his back, seeing that he was a mess. The enviro-suit he wore was ripped and torn, as if he was thrown into a sea of razor blades and came out shredded, the tears through his suit looked more like he was attacked by some animal than just cutting himself. Strange liquids could be seen on the suit, and out of a compulsive need to investigate the ooze, Gliday touched it with his gloved hand for the results, having his fingers feel the sticky and thick slime that stuck well together.

Gilday wiped his gloved hand on the scientist's suit out of disgust as he mumbled.

"Not like he'll mind."

The scientist's enviro-suit's helmet visor was broken, the fair skinned face revealed to the hostile environment of this world, and Gilday assumed he must have died from a lack of oxygen; or at least he thought so. The supposedly dead scientist's skin was not pale and his body showed no signs of a visible wound or bleeding, so Gilday took a closer look at the face of this man to check if he really was gone.

That's when the eyes of a dead man opened.

"Gah!" Gilday jumped back out of shock, the last thing he expected was a dead man to be alive.

The scientist scrambled to get up, like a wounded animal trying to back away from its predator, looking into Gilday's eyes as if he had seen a monster.

"NO!" The man shouted. "Keep away from me!"

Gilday calmed himself down as he went to try and calm down his victim, but all he got in response were flailing hands of desperation.

"Hey, take it easy sir." Gilday said calmly, trying not to antagonize the already shocked man, holding his hands up in ease. "I'm with the Imperial Survey Corps."

The man stopped flailing, but he could still be seen shacking underneath his damaged suit, still able to breath without any trouble.

"My name is Gilday Kesslar." The scout introduced himself. "I'm part of a rescue team sent to find you, not some monster."

"R-rescue?" The scientist asked, before making a grunt at the mention. "Bah! You can't rescue me, not from the serpents."

Gilday rolled his eyes inside his visor helmet, not in the mood to deal with an instant jabbering madman. "There are no serpents. It's just you and me, and the rest of my team… eventually."

"No! The serpents!" The scientist screamed again. "You don't understand, you don't know what I've seen!"

"See? You don't even have a working light." Gilday pointed at the broken torch on the scientist's suit.

"It doesn't matter. They don't need light to see, the darkness are their eyes." The scientist mumbled to himself, before suddenly speaking up to his annoyed rescuer. "We need to get out of here... Now!"

"For what? I just told you-

"Gilday!"

The scout heard the familiar voice of one of his team members echoing from afar, walking past the scientist to move him along.

"Well then, I guess your wish is granted." Gilday motioned the man to come with him, who just stood in place.

"The serpents. They crawl and slither in shadow, waiting to strike-

"I really don't need this, so let's go!" Gilday grabbed the man by his arm, a rather rash move on his part but he wanted to get off this barren world as soon as possible. "The sooner we leave, the better."

The scientist complied with the orders, but not before looking back towards the darkness to see a glimpse of a dark figure crawling away. The man's eye twitched with fear, a fear that was not seen since the early days of the galaxy. Something slithered in the darkness, an unimaginable horror that no man should ever have to see.

Something unknown.

 **O-O-O**

A hulking metallic structure orbits the dark world of their choosing, an Imperial space station constructed only a few months ago under classified information.

The _Renascence_ as it was called, an Imperial research station along the edges of Wild Space that was separated from the Unknown Regions, one of the more recent Imperial projects classified under only the most highly ranked officials. The _Renascence_ and the planet it orbited was sort of a border crossing of the two, unsure if it should be classified under Wild Space or Unknown Regions, but regardless it was crucial to future exploration and domination of the galaxy. From the station, the planet that has yet to be classified with a proper name, merely the temporary code name _Blackworld_ until further investigation.

The station itself has a large disc like platform underneath a few stories of squared structures that are stacked above one another that acted as the main hub of sorts for the station. Three metallic extensions were connected to slightly smaller structures similar to the hub, each with large hangers by the ends for supply ships or transports to the surface of the planet. Turbolaser turrets neatly aligned along the top of the structure for adequate defense and even a few TIE fighter squadrons were stored in one of the hangers exclusively for military ships.

Inside one of the _Renascence's_ hangers, a small scouting vessel landed in the spacious hanger, an MRX-BR Pacifier that served as a heavily armed ship for the purposes of scouting out worlds. As the ship landed and opened its hatch, Gilday and his team exited the ship, the scientist not far behind who slowly walked out and stayed behind his rescuers, all out of their enviro-suits and in their Imperial assigned uniforms.

For the whole trip, the scientist had been mumbling about serpents and horrors, and the scouts had to put up with the madman's nonsense while getting little background on their rescued companion other than his name Velom. Contacting their superior did little more than add to the mystery, only being told that Velom should be escorted to the medical ward for psychanalysis and nothing more.

Gilday had been chosen to escort their mad scientist, much to his displeasure. But being the new recruit on his team, he complied and took Velom further in the station while his team hung around the hanger. He had to put up with the mumblings of the scientist who wouldn't shut up about serpents yet again, something that while annoying, also intrigued him despite having no data on any known life on _Blackworld_.

The walk through the neat corridors was unremarkable as the trip to the station, until getting to the medical ward he was requested to go to and met the Imperial medical officer by the ward's door, a young woman in a uniformed medical coat.

"I'm here with your patient, doc." Gilday said, pointing over to Velom behind him. "Careful, he may try to hiss."

"Hiss, sir?" She asked politely with a raised eyebrow.

"It's uh, a joke about him." Gilday sheepishly admitted. "He keeps talking about serpents."

"Serpents? No such creature was found on that world."

"I know. That's what makes him so weird, but at least the air is breathable down there."

"Hmm…" The medical officer took a look at the man, who appeared to shacking once more. "I'll take it from here."

"Okay well, if you need me, I'll be at the ship."

The woman smiled at the scout while she took Velom inside the medical ward. "I'll see you for dinner, Gilday."

Gilday only smiled back as the two parted ways, walking back from where he came from.

Inside the medical ward, Velom beheld the familiar white room of comfort he once took pleasure in. He would have loved to stay in the peaceful ward of bacta tanks and steady beeps, but no longer could he take joy in anything. All he could think about were the serpents, the slithering black things in his head, the shadows that creeped in his mind, the hissing… the horrible, horrible hissing.

He didn't want to imagine the screeching that followed.

But he held himself from acting out his dark thoughts in his head, trying to keep his shivering composure as he laid down in bed after his examination. He had to take a few pills and get plenty of rest, nothing major to note of oddly despite the thorough examinations that were conducted. But he didn't care for that, all he wanted now was rest, rest to pleasant dreams to keep the serpents away from him. Velom slowly drifted into slumber, unaware of his surroundings and slipped into unconsciousness without worry.

But even in slumber… the serpent stirs from its rest.

 **O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars Rebels.


End file.
